Imagining a recyclable EU: Belgian company strives to be the world's first "fair trade" electronics

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Source: Global Post

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Do you know how much of your beloved BlackBerry can be absorbed back into nature? Have you envisioned the end-of-life plan for your precious new iPad? Considered cradle-to-cradle care for your webcam?

High-tech entrepreneurs Marc Aelbrecht, Jean-Pierre D'Haese and Xavier Petre are betting that if you haven’t factored these questions into your purchasing choices yet, you soon will — and you’ll go looking for companies like theirs. The three Belgians are the brains and consciences behind United Pepper, the first electronics producer in the world to receive certification for “fair trade,” signifying the sustainability of its production process and good working conditions in its manufacturing facilities in Vietnam.

Equally important to the company are its products’ biodegradability and recyclability. United Pepper makes a webcam so green it’s been known to sprout on occasion. The octopus-shaped Lili is filled with a fiber similar to cotton called kapok and sand from the Mekong River, and if it is kept too long in a damp environment, kapok seeds may send forth little tendrils through Lili’s cotton sheath.

If that evolution doesn’t happen by consumer choice, it may be forced by legislation. The European Union, which the United Nations estimates produces 8.7 million tons of e-waste per year, already has the strictest electronics recycling and disposal regulations in the world enshrined in its directive on Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE ), but it is poorly enforced. It’s against EU law, for example, to ship off non-working appliances or electronics. Amid scandals of toxic European waste being dumped illegally on third-world countries, European leaders are currently in the process of tightening the WEEE laws even further and pledging better enforcement.

Read more: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/benelux/100722/belgium-electronics-fair-trade